HistOry

A long.. long time ago, there used to be a really stupid camp song that was based on 3 commercials that were popular at the time. It goes like this:

Mcdonalds, Mcdonalds, (make the letter with your finger)
Kentucky Fried Chicken (act like a chicken) aaand
Pizza hut (you would draw the pizza hut symbol with your hands)

it was really stupid (does anyone even remember this?) but it got stuck in everyone's heads. Everyone sang it at camp for the whole 2 weeks. Anyways some (mean) older boys used different lyrics to make fun of My sister (Oksana) and I's names.
Oksana, Oksana
Kentucky fried Chicken and
O - de -sa

How did I deal with this juvinile teasing? I cried my eyes out of course. AND I told my mom (who probably laughed)

Anyways, this was eventually forgotten until I joined a church youth group a few years later that happened to have a few of those (mean) boys in it. And, the song was of course remembered and became a hit again. ( I didn't cry this time.. or at least, not much)
Any who - it got pretty boring singing the whole song over and over again, so they just shortened it to bug only me, and kept calling me O-de-sa.
Eventually this became the norm, until one fateful day a breakfast cereal commercial changed the world as i once knew it:
O, O, O
Cheerio,
the one and only
Cheerios

from then on, I have been known as O, O, Odesa.

Are you Ukrainian? Culture Test

You know your Ukrainian .. (or straight off the boat) when..

You know that there are three main Orthodox Churches (Ukrainian, Greek, Orthodox) and two Catholic Churches. You’re not sure about the real differences between them. Your ancestors went to whichever church happened to be closer to their home. That is unless they were from the Crimean Tatar, in which case you’re Muslim. Most likely, you regard Protestants with suspicion.

You have a close family member that likes pork fat. Salted, smoked, peppered or spiced. No, they seriously like pork fat. They know that the Russians make fun of them because of this, but they still like pork fat.

In most cases you eat at home. Your wife/sister/mother is probably a good cook. Not as good as your granny, though. You are convinced that Russians can’t cook.

You can take pride in being probably the only country in the world that has a word for vodka other than ‘vodka’-- you call it horilka. Naturally, Ukrainian horilka is the best vodka in the world.

You think Russians are thieves and drunkards, Jews greedy, Poles snobbish, Byelorussians inferior, and you tell jokes about Moldavians. At the same time, you have acquaintances, friends, or even relatives from these nationalities.

You can’t seriously expect to be able to transact business, or deal with officials, without paying bribes. Having friends in the right places or drinking with the right people would help enormously. (Ok this is deffinitly for immigrants - but really true..)

You still argue with Russians over the heritage of Kievan Rus. They claim it’s theirs or shared, whilst you claim it’s exclusively yours. (DAMN IT! TO NASH!)

If the Russians want to piss you off, they call you Polonised Russians, whilst you know that Russians are not even a Slavic nation at all, they are savage Finns from the northern forests.

Your country has been conquered by wave after wave of invaders throughout its history. Tatars, Lithuanians, Poles, Hungarians, Nomadic Eastern Tribes, Austrians, Swedes, Turks, Russians, Germans-- they’ve all been here.

All your neighbours (with the potential exception of Byelorussians) think they’re entitled to some or even all of your territory. At the same time, you may think that some of Russia, some of Poland and all of Byelorussia should be annexed to Ukraine.

You can take rightful pride in your Cossack past and the heroic struggles against the Turks and Tatars. Plundering Moldavia on a regular basis was far less heroic and therefore less known.

You’re still not sure whether Ivan Mazepa was a traitor or the greatest Ukrainian patriot of all time. Same story with Bogdan Khmelnitsky.

You haven’t seen a Ukrainian movie in a very long time. If you have, then you haven’t seen a decent Ukrainian movie in a very long time.

Generations of your ancestors fought for independence and were always defeated. Your generation did not really fight for independence yet won it.

Domestic Arts

Now, this may come as a shock to many of you, but I wasn't always the organized and efficient person I am now. Actually, I used to be, "Messy Dessy" (Oh god.. it still hurts a little)
Anyways, surprise surprise, I was TERRIBLE at Ukrainian Artsy things. My Ukrainian Pysanku, (easter eggs) mostly resembled large blobs of mismatched colors with large cracks down the middle. When we made easter bread, the braids I made looked like, well, giant lumps of dough, and in Ukrainian dancing I was pretty much off in my own special world.
But the WORST was embroidery. I was so, bad at embroidery that I would actually try to hide in the coat room after recess to try to avoid doing it. (who misses recess.. I sure do!)

Now, granted, I was REALLY bad at it. (I couldn't even thred the needle) But I also was not encouraged in any way to get better. In fact, the Parent volunteer would laugh in my face if I asked if I could take some embroidery home to practice on.

Well, We would do these little cross stitch patterns and give them to our moms for mothers day. The teacher would design a more difficult pattern for the kids who were really good at it, A medium hard pattern for the rest of the kids, and a very easy pattern for the unfortunite kids who could barely tie their own shoe laces.

And then she would make a "special" pattern for me.

It was torture, poking the stupid needle through those tiny holes and making little X's and Crosses while the other kids made beautiful flowers and pretty designs. But, well, I guess my heart just wasn't into it, or maybe I didn't love my mom as much as the other kids, because for Mother's day she got an unfinished piece of white fabric with 4 little red cross stitches that the Teacher had actually done FOR me, out of pity.

Flu This

Being sick reminded me of some good old fashioned Ukrainian home remedies that have been passed along from generation to generation in my family. Most of them revolve around Ukraine's official cure for anything.. Garlic.

• My Aunt swears that eating 4 whole cloves of garlic will cure what ever ail's yah. (Little garlic joke for yah)
• My mom says my Baba, (who deserves her own blog devoted to her craziness, but thats another story) gave her and her brothers and sisters a tasty concoction made with warm milk, honey aaaaand, you guessed it. Garlic.
• Another favorite is breathing in the steam from a pot of boiled onions. Some Ukrainian families swear by DRINKING boiled onion juice with a bit of lemon in it. Onion tea, if you will.
• And if a Ukrainian remedy doesn't have garlic in it, you can bet it has alcohol. People in Southern Ukraine say that soaking a piece of bread in alcohol and then putting it on your chest for 10 min. will get rid of any cough.
• Also, a shot of moonshine, in hot milk with honey and raw egg yolk.. eeeeeewwww.